Be the Beacon

The holidays are here soon and as we approach Christmas, you might be putting together your show’s community service campaign.  It’s appropriate, it’s where listeners are, and the alignment is natural that you do something to help your community.

Listeners are stressed about life, frustrated, and looking to join a brand that does good in the community.  But I wonder:  will you raise money for a charity this year, or will you do something bigger and atypical for a cause important to you to deepen your authenticity and affirm your humanity?

Often, I’ll tune into a radio station that will beg listeners for money, which then gets turned over to a charity.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  There’s always the fear that the charity will get the big win in money, a database of your listeners who gave, and credit for the project.

What’s more impactful to build your brand is to focus on a community service image year-round that envelopes a singular cause.  That will show the heart of your talent and be more memorable than just raising money for a charity.

An example.  Six years ago, we had this conversation at Indie 88, Toronto.  The morning show said that homelessness was their cause.  At any given moment in the winter, there are 5000 homeless on the streets of Toronto.  The show went to the shelters to talk with the homeless as well as those who’ve dedicated their lives to taking care of them.  They heard stories that more deeply impacted the effort.  Our show is built around being different.  If it smacks of pro forma, we tend to back up and think about it some more. We learned that what homeless people need more than anything else is socks to prevent frostbite.

So, we developed Socks for the Souls.  In our first year, the Josie Dye Show with Carlin and Brent asked the audience to send them 10,000 pair of socks.  We got over 170,000 which were turned over to the shelters.  This year, we will collect our one-millionth pair.  Kinda cool.  Everything the show does is focused on the homeless and tends to be around socks.  The station has a concert this week.  The price of admission?  Ten pair of socks.  We even put an Amazon link on the website so listeners can, with a couple of clicks, send us socks.  For just a few dollars if they do it, listeners feel better about themselves and us, we feed a passion for the show, and we make a difference in the community.

At WINK-FM in Fort Myers, FL, their cause is animals.  So, we do “Pet Projects” year-round.  At Christmas, Logan and Sadie ask listeners to donate dog toys which are then delivered to the shelters, because we aren’t sure if Santa visits animal shelters on Christmas Eve.  Or we’re raising money to buy and train a service animal for a wounded warrior who lives in town.  Or we camp out at grocery stores, asking listeners to buy us a bag of pet food we give to the shelters so they can save that money in their budgets.  We do a similar campaign at KSLX, Phoenix with Mark and NeanderPaul’s Operation Pets and Vets.  Focused, big, different.

Every show I work with has a focused cause, important to them.

Two things to consider:  many radio stations will promote everything.  If a local charity needs promotion for an event, they’ll do it.  The thing I’ve learned is that if you do everything, all for different causes, it adds up to less than if you choose one and center everything around that.

The other item to think about is if you align with a charity, all their imagery transfers to you.  If it’s an old, tired charity, you could be perceived that way, too.  Case in point is Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston.  They were approached by the Marines years ago, asking them to raise toys for their Toys for Tots campaign.  We re-framed the effort to Karson and Kennedy’s 10,000 Toys for Girls and Boys.  Lots of shows do this now, but we were the first.  We made it ours, listeners responded positively, we built our own show’s images, and turned everything over to the Marines.  A win all the way around because it fed our cause:  kids.

We are targeting two groups when we do campaigns like this.  The smaller group of fans who’ll help you reach your goal and the much, much larger group who won’t, but whose perceptions you’re positively impacting so they feel even better about you.

It’s easy to do something for a local charity.  And they’ll be the big winners if you do.  But ask:  are you all about the local children’s hospital or the cause of kids?  The animal shelters or the cause of pets?  The cause of vets?  The cause of mental health?  The cause of volunteerism?  What’s important to you as a human being?  Be that.

Be focused.  Be big.  Be different.  Then, you’ll be noticed.

Also, be the beacon.  Listeners want to be around brands that show their values and do good for the community.  Light the positive path forward for listeners to feel good about their world, their community, their life, and you.  Bring them there and they will follow.

Then watch them join your brand more often and fall more deeply in love with you because you’ve shown your humanity.  Build the many dimensions of your brand through the passions of your talent.  That’s the road to epic.

12 Important Fall Reminders

With school back in session and the fall upon us, listeners are back to their post-summer routines. Inspired by the smart brand managers and talent I’ve been around, here are some reminders that will help your show:

  1. Let’s remember and assume the audience knows less about our show than we do. So…frequent resets of who’s on the program (introducing the cast regularly) will help both current and new listeners.
  2. Reset our regular features. “If you’re new to our show,” is a very powerful sentence because it’s a reset statement which allows you to explain, in one sentence, what the feature we’re about to do is all about. Giving them context will make it easier for them to listen.
  3. Teasing is critical to get more listening. Teases, if well-written, add forward momentum to a show and compel images that if listeners do have to leave, they’ll miss something great (so they might return the next day).
  4. Horizontal teasing is your most valuable tease – telling your 7:45 audience this morning the substantive thing you’re doing tomorrow morning at 7:45 is powerful. We stand a greater chance of gaining another occasion if we do this. Daily cume is critical to the ratings going up.
  5. Listeners know if you’re prepared. Know your topic, how you’ll get into it (hook them), support the topic, and then get out before you walk into the studio every day. Let’s show our fans that respect and leave them wanting more.
  6. Average attention spans are ten seconds. The first ten seconds are the most important of every break. Spend your most time on that and the audience will stay.
  7. Listeners’ default position is that they’re being sold something. Listeners come for great content. Give them that, then sell them something. Remember when talking about a station promotion (which is important to do), you’re selling them something as that isn’t perceived as content.
  8. Brevity is critical. It’s one of the keys to keeping listeners. Let’s not waste their time with breaks that don’t have a focus and game plan. A great writer values editing the most of all that they do. Ditto social media posts – those that do well tend to be short and take up no more space than they have to.
  9. I know we get tired of hearing the same old songs on the show, but the listeners don’t. Familiarity in everything is key to winning in morning drive. Support and be enthusiastic about everything your station does. You are a voice of trust and credibility to the audience and will be a bigger part of the station because of it. There’s no downside to that.
  10. We are an immensely mobile society so much of their listening is in cars. Think of this and imagine it as you’re designing your breaks. Our very, very, very best content should go in that block. We can create the greatest impressions when we have them as a captive audience in the car and give them our most entertaining content.
  11. Be brilliant at the basics. Weather, traffic, identifying the radio station by name, setting up breaks, having payoffs. Being great at the basics always helps to get that extra measure of ratings.
  12. Finally, the one thing listeners want more of than anything? Connection, fun, and laughter. With exception, they want an escape from the anxiety of life. Provide that human connection then be fun/funny/laughter/humor/silliness (pick your word) and give it to them and they’ll come back the next day for more. A connection, your honesty, and authenticity go a long way to character building and showing your humanity.

Fall is a great time to reset the show – freshen up your positioning and try new ideas as you recapture audience that changed over the summer due to lifestyle and new listeners find you.

For a printable copy of these reminders, click here.

A Pivot Point for Top Talent

Imagine a total stranger walking up to you on the street and baring their soul.  Telling you a story of great weakness and vulnerability in their life.  That would be odd, right?

But that’s exactly the kind of relationship we want with our audience. They’re total strangers to us, yet we aren’t to them.  Which is one of the key elements that makes a personality successful.

A pivot point for top talent happens incrementally as you nurture that relationship with listeners.  How?  By building trust and showing your humanity.  Trust is built with them the same way you build it with your close friends and family.  Through honesty and vulnerability.  Trust is a product of vulnerability over time.

Which brings me to the school shootings in Uvalde, Texas.  I am no longer under the belief that we can ignore these events.  They are happening in our listeners’ lives, and we must acknowledge this fact rather than run from or fear them.  But what you do solely rests on the kind of relationship you have with the audience.

Encouraged by their great managers (Brian Maloney and Sammy Simpson), Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL-FM, Raleigh, have worked tirelessly to have this kind of relationship with their audience.  From an on-air discussion about what happened in Uvalde, they received that unexpected call from a total stranger – a local woman who was in the Columbine school shootings several years prior.  She was encouraged by her kid in the back seat to call the show as they were listening to share her experience given the on-air conversation.  More humanity and compassion.  A story that resonated with the team and proves how comfortable that total stranger was to honor her relationship with those guys by baring her soul.

Hear that call here and feel the emotional connection this show is building with its fans.

Don’t believe me?  Here’s an unsolicited text the show got from yet another listener (another stranger) that says it all:

I’m sure it’s not lost on you, but just in case, I wanted to mention this.  You three (and the station) have created such a positive/fun environment that she was able to not only listen with her kids on a regular basis but felt safe and heard enough to call in and have an open conversation without any solicitation after what she went through in ’99.  I hope you all remember that that’s a testament to the foundation you all have built over the years.

That pivot point, groomed over the long term, is one of the reasons this show has been number one in every demo for nine consecutive months.

What kind of relationship does your show have with its audience?  Is it part of your strategy to win?  How are you working on that every day?

My favorite part of coaching is watching talent epically connect the dots like this and level up.

Makes me proud to be in radio.

Practice Makes Permanent

Many of us read in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, that it takes 10,000 hours of intensive practice to achieve mastery of a complex skill.

Which brings me to show prep.

Back in the day, personality-driven shows could get away with winging it.  No longer, though.  The audience’s expectations, along with their A.D.D., won’t allow any show, new or tenured, to make it up as they go along.

I was asked recently to talk with some Audacy brand managers about the growth of talent.  Audacy is making a greater commitment to growing their people.  In the Q&A, their wonderful personality, Katie Neal, asked how to make a show more creative.

Well, you have to put in your 10,000 hours.  But an X Factor to making those hours valuable, and my answer to her question, is to surround everyone with more curiosity.  Creativity and curiosity are tied together, as I’ve discussed in this blog before (Steve Uses the “C” Word).

Prep isn’t sitting around a room, throwing out a big topic and then asking, “What can we do with it?”  Prep is marrying your elusive wonderment against a topic and engaging others to truly come up with angles that are memorable, different, and can’t miss.

In the last two weeks there are two examples with shows I work with that inspire me:

  • I had a Curiosity Zoom with Lexi and Banks, KUBL, Salt Lake City. In our chat about the Will Smith-Chris Rock story, it was noted that everyone was curious if the whole thing was faked.  That’s when we all wondered what a body language expert would say if they just watched the video.  So, they found one.  It was a fascinating break around the big topic.  The body language expert shared he thought the whole thing was staged based on what he saw.  Memorable, different, and can’t miss.
  • There was no bigger topic than the Final Four match-up between Duke and UNC if you live in the Triangle. We couldn’t do enough around this story line.  Chatting with the morning show Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL, Raleigh, someone said that it’s always the next day in Australia.  So, they called a friend there the day before the game to ask who won, claiming it had already been played there.  He said UNC.  Most listeners got the joke.  A few didn’t.  And one called the program for clarification.  The laughter continued.  Memorable, different, and can’t miss.

These two treatments of those two big topics happened because I have curious people on the shows who are forever falling down the rabbit hole, reading about it all to further stimulate their fascination.

Curiosity needs to be nurtured.  Are we doing enough for our talent to do that?

I am so lucky to have been around shows over the years who always practice their curiosity.  In almost every instance, that curiosity has become permanent and part of the ethos on how those shows prep.

Look at your program.  Do you have curious people?  And are they surrounded by even more curiosity?

You want a show that’s memorable, different, and can’t miss?  Go find people like that, who channel their inner 8-year-old, and question everything, with an insatiable appetite to learn more, more, and more about everything.

Then watch what happens to the creativity of the cast and your show.

That ain’t a bad way to spend those 10,000 hours to becoming epic.

We’re Gonna Need Better Prizes

I worked with a show many years ago that was, to put it politely, “ratings-challenged”.  The program director and I knew the issues were rooted in relevance of content, not being local enough, and a lack of unique treatment of those content choices to stand out.  But what we do is people management so we’d regularly enroll the show’s principle players in finding a solution that would improve things.

We’d ask the talent what fixes the larger ratings issues so they could take ownership of the right path forward.  And each time we would get back the same answer:  we need better prizes.

The show didn’t last much longer.

Our long-term wins come strategically.  Where the show thought that manipulating listenership and getting contest players to come back to the program was the answer, developing images is always the smarter choice.

Have we identified the right content is the first question.  Then how we do that content to endear ourselves to the audience is the key that unlocks the door for increased engagement with fans.

This show consistently played to the two percent of game or contest players when being much more concerned with the perceptions of the other 98% just tuning in, looking to be entertained, was more important.  Where we’d preach that how we gave out whatever prize we had was the smarter putt, they stayed hyper-focused on the quality of the prize.

Who’s Wheel of Fortune really doing the show for?  Those three contestants spinning the wheel with Pat and Vanna?  Or those of us sitting on the sofa trying to figure out the puzzle, looking to win nothing?  It’s always about us, the larger group they want watching.  Go time the opening of Wheel.  From the moment the show starts until the first letter of the first puzzle is revealed (that’s when the show is about the viewer), it’s less than thirty seconds.

Think of those 98% when doing your content (contests, games, or not).  What messages are listeners walking away with about your show?  A concept I consistently talk with talent about is doing their content for the person least interested.  If those fans leave knowing how real you are; identifying with the story you just told; vicariously playing along with the game you have the prize for; understanding how different and relevant you are; laughing and having fun, then you’ll find your win.

There are tactical things every show can and should do to extend listenership.  But the truly long-lasting wins come strategically.

“We’re gonna need better prizes” solves nothing.  Coach your show to process how those you will never hear from, the other 98%, are reacting to what you’re doing.

Advocating for their win advances all efforts for your win to becoming an epic brand.

Great Shows Don’t Happen by Accident

No standout show or talent in radio got there by guessing at it.  The Ryan Seacrests and Howard Sterns of our industry ascended to iconic status (iconic:  great ratings, tons of revenue) because there was a strategic process in place to get there.

Does your show have one?  More importantly, do your talent have the three elements necessary for that strategy to work?

A new year brings me new clients.  Because what I do is a boutique service, looking to pay a higher level of attention to fewer shows, I evaluate any potential program around three key elements.  These attributes indicate if those on the show, the ones we’re pining to be Seacrests and Sterns, are a cut above the rest of the market to get there.

Those three areas are their Aptitude, Attitude, and Work Ethic.  Let me touch on each as you think about your talent, hoping they can make a difference building your brand.

Aptitude:  simply put, do the people on the show have talent and a capacity to be bold, gigantic personalities fans crave to be around each morning.  Are they fun/funny?  Do they have a natural interest in what’s going on in the world and a perspective on everything current with no fear to share it?  Can they be vulnerable with their life and honest with the audience?  Are they self-confident and curious?  Are they electric to be around?  Will they get involved locally to generate great content for on-air and social media that can be done in unique ways?

Attitude:  are they positive team builders who put all others above themselves?  Can they lead unselfishly?  Do they figure out how to get stuff done and innovate around speedbumps that appear on the road to great execution of relevant content?  Or are they the types who tell you how something can’t be done or why it won’t work?  I call these the “if only…” people.  If only I had this it would work.  Nope, we create our own path and success.  Great attitudes drive wins.

Work Ethic:  gone are the days where talent could show up, be pretty, and get great ratings.  Because of the competition for listeners’ time, we must work at this (in a word:  prep) and earn it every single break.  Identify the right content, develop a treatment of that content which makes it memorable, and hunker down to pull it off.  I can tell if a show prepped or is winging it when I listen – you can, too.  We no longer have that grace to get this done.

Every talent needs to be coached up (even Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers are coached up).  Having great aptitude, a superior attitude, and an unparalleled work ethic are the foundational elements of personalities who are difference-makers.

We need talent to help set us apart.  Leaders help groom these attributes in personalities to get them there.

Couple that with a strategy that fits your people, and your win will never be accidental.

Work hard at it and it might even be epic.

What Kind of Conversationalist Are You?

Just before Thanksgiving I had surgery.  A few weeks ago, I got together with some non-radio friends, and one asked how I was doing.  Thirty seconds into my update, the other person interrupted and proceeded to tell me, over the course of several minutes, about his last three surgeries. The focus never came back to me and my story.

Have you ever listened to a morning show where they’re talking to a guest, only for someone on the show to quickly seize the spotlight back to talk about themselves?  People being interviewed hate this and it ain’t good radio.

I think I know why this happens and will share that in a moment.

Truly great radio is a conversation the audience not only eavesdrops on, but feels they’re a part of, too.  As I share with talent, terrific breaks are dialogues, not monologues.  And it’s our job to create those dialogues.

An astute personality I work with recently asked how to protect a conversation from becoming one-sided.  The answer is simple:  be curious, ask questions.  Then listen.  Because the answers draw that person out, make them the center of attention, and their story comes to life and gives you that dialogue.

Had the person above opted to ask me questions about my surgery, my recovery, and my life around all of it, the focus would have been on me, and I might have told an interesting story about the experience that could have engaged and entertained everyone in the room.  I believe I had that story but was prevented from telling it because the other person so badly wanted to talk about himself.  Had I had that chance, he would have laughed at the name the nurse called the surgeon behind his back!

You fix this with prep, inquisitiveness, and an endless supply of questions (not statements) that make the story and its details come to life.  By being genuinely interested in the person and their subject matter.

Great storytelling lives in the twists and turns that magically appear when curious people draw them out.  The talent’s role in these interviews is to wonder a lot and wander freely around it.  That’s where awesome storytelling happens.

I don’t fault the person above for cutting me off.  I know why he did it and it wasn’t for egotistical reasons.  He was looking for connection points with my experience:  you had surgery, so did I, we have something in common.  The mistake happened when he did it, at the beginning.  His stories should have come after mine.  Then we would have had that great conversation and I could have returned the favor with all my interest in him.

There’s a terrific article a smart program director shared called What Kind of Conversationalist Are You?  It’s short but powerful and talks more about this.  Find it here and engage your great talent to be even better communicators as you continue coaching them up.

That’ll push them further down the road to becoming epic for your radio station.

PS:  My friend and 2021 CMA Country Broadcast Personality of the Year, Cody Alan, has written a book called Hear’s the Thing.  It’s all about his story and how he became one of radio and TV’s best interviewers.  Chapter 8 should be required reading by all personalities who want to be even better at the art of conversation.

Expectations Are the Thief of Joy

I’m an Apple guy and just ordered their new MacBook Pro. It’s received stellar reviews and it’s time to update my laptop, so I placed my order.

One thing Apple gets better than any other of the hundreds of brands I interact with is that they know they’re not in the technology or computer business. They’re in the experience business. I’ve always said that about those of us in radio, too.

The laptop is backordered, and I was told it wouldn’t be delivered until December 23. Then Apple did what Apple does. They managed my expectations to bring me joy. Over the last couple of weeks, as I’ve checked on the status of the order, they’ve consistently moved the delivery date up. As I write this, it’s December 9. Where all other brands are having “supply chain issues” and delaying deliveries, Apple is heightening my anticipation as they always do so I stay joyful and gush about them as I’m doing to you.

Teasing is important in radio. But not for the reason most of us believe. It’s near impossible to extend listening as people have lives and those lives will always win out over them giving us another quarter hour. What great teasing does is set the expectation that listeners will miss something great if they tune out. So they get a sense they won’t be in on something special, so they come back to the show for more of that joy.

Often, I hear shows offer no teasing. That ain’t good. Many times, I hear something bland and unimaginative (“coming up next, our Hollywood Report” or “in six minutes, we’ll talk about when I took my dog to the park”). But when we tease intriguing, connective, relevant, entertaining content, being done in a way our competitors cannot, we bring joy to the break and set the audience to return for more of it the next day.

Worse still, I continue to hear stations and shows tell me that I need to do things like tune in Thursday at 7:20 for a “major announcement”. Only to find out that three days of hype led to the morning show telling me Maroon Five will play at the civic center in the spring and that we have family four packs/win ‘em before you can buy ‘em tickets starting on Monday. Yikes. Half the audience shrugged, the other half yawned, and all of them felt duped.

Expectations are the thief of joy indeed. The more you tease the same thing, the higher the expectation and greater chance of less joy.

Listen to your show. Ask if they are on the very best content available on every single day. Because it all starts with content and everything they do is considered content. Is it substantive and strategic? Does it align the program and cast with an image important to developing a relationship with the audience? Then, is it being done in a way that fits and both heightens expectations and delivers it to bring joy to the audience receiving it?

Our customers (listeners) want happiness. It’s in our control and epic if we bring it to them. But first we must set the right expectation and then deliver on it.

Oh wait, the MacBook Pro is now coming December 2…

When Will My Show Make Money?

Program directors and talent wonder the same question: when will we get ratings? Managers and sales folks ask a different question: when will the show help me make money?

The trajectory has always been the same to answer both questions:

Content leads to…

Images which lead to …

Perceptions which lead to…

Ratings which lead to…

$$ Revenue $$

Doing the right content in the right way leads to positive images, which give you the right perceptions, which then generate ratings, which results in revenue.

It all starts with the right content.  Remember:  everything you do (everything!) is content to the audience.  Are you making the best content choices all the time so they stick around or come back?

This trajectory applies to every show, and any format.  Patience plays a critical role, but being strategic about your content, based on the age of the show and its relationship with the audience, informs the strategy.

Guess at that content and who knows where you’ll land?  But have that right game plan and add in the patience noted above (it’s very important to be patient because you cannot move this along faster than the audience will allow) and you’ll make lots of money and might even become epic.

Grading Your Morning Show, Giving It All C’s

I’ve spoken before in Planet Reynolds about the foundational elements every show needs to be strategic:  what is the show about (its “plot”)?  What is your game plan for character development?  Is the cast focused on earning the right images to drive loyalty?  Does the show have significant benchmark appointments, that cannot be duplicated, which will drive occasions back to the program?

I talk with new shows about the “need for C’s”.  A subjective metric to assess if your show is on course.  These are the Four C’s every talent and show should work on, around the framework above, to assure they’re strategic.  How would you rate your show in each of these areas?

  1. Connection.  Despite social media, the internet, and all that texting, human beings, at their core, desire connection.  Human to human contact is essential to developing a relationship.  I recently joined Clear so I can get through security lines faster at airports.  From registering to finishing my account at their kiosk to the security line, I was accompanied by an actual human being.  Ever call a customer service number, only to sit through three minutes of pressing “1” for this and “2” for that before you get a person who can help?  I bet you’re not happier after all of that.  Connection is one of radio’s superpowers.  The audience wants to connect with your talent, and they must work on that purposefully when doing the show.
  2. Companionship.  We learned during Covid, with everyone sequestered in their homes with their small circle of family for over one year, that companionship is critical.  Companionship fosters a deep relationship.  Think of those in your personal life you’re close to.  They provide you companionship.  Deep inside, so many listeners feel alone.  Scrolling Facebook a million times a day doesn’t fix that.  We can, though, by reminding the audience that, wherever they are in life, they aren’t alone if they hang out with us.
  3. Content.  This is how we accomplish numbers one and two above.  We engage with certain websites because we’re looking for content.  We turn on a TV show because we want content.  Pop open Facebook, Instagram or any other social media app?  You’re looking for content.  Same for your audience.  They’re looking for content, too.  Are you on the best content in each break on every day?  Or is it irrelevant pablum the audience shrugs their shoulders at?  The right content affords connection and companionship.
  4. Comedy.  Life sucks, so make people laugh.  In the two decades I’ve coached shows in North America and Europe, there is one constant:  no show wins without solid humor images.  Not laugh in a set up/punchline kind of way.  Not in doing wacky “radio bits”.  Listeners want to be around genuine, fun people.  Yea, there are days the news or pop culture cycle compels us to be serious – those are outliers, and we must respect them – but go have fun and people will wanna be around you.

The Four C’s:  Connection, Companionship, Content, and Comedy.

It might be instructional to ask your show to grade themselves in each area on a 1-10 scale, with managers doing it, too.  Compare those grades and see where you match.  Any disparity gives great programmers an opportunity to influence their show with yet another strategic conversation about their growth.

I’d be interested to hear how that turns out so let me know.

Because grading your morning show and giving them all C’s might just keep you on the path to being f’n epic.